“Despite all the Obama administration’s fearmongering and as horrifying as any shooting is, gun violence has precipitously declined over the decades without any meaningful federal law being enacted. This most likely tells us there are a number of other social currents driving this kind of violence. The left believes that the number of guns is at fault rather than social ills—because no person can be evil. So the debate takes on the same old contours, and we focus on firearms and nothing else. That kind of political debate only makes it less likely that anything good will happen.” – David Harsanyi in The More You Politicize Guns the Weaker Your Case Becomes [at reason.com]
Truer words et cetera.
For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong. (I read it first in a Larry Niven book, not sure if he’s the originator.) Not exclusive to violence perpetrated with guns but it makes a good lesson in humility. Or it should.
I hate that damned quote. It proves only that said simple quote is wrong.
For every problem, there are as many solutions as there are victims. Unfortunately, too many rabble rousers take advantage of having a coercive monopoly government to select one of those zillions solutions to impose on everybody, whether or not the same solution would work for everybody with the same problem, and even on those who don’t have the problem.
Even more to the point, every problem actually has a zillion solutions, all varying as to how many other people they effect, among other variables. You can fix flat with a patch, by changing tires, by buying a new tire, by buying an entire new car. You can get a replacement from your trunk, from a store, or from another car. You can get the money to buy the spare from your wallet, your checking account, your piggy bank, or some random stranger. But truth be told, the one simple solution is that you should do it without harming anybody else. However complicated you want to make it, following that one simple rule makes life a lot easier for everyone.
Finally getting back to that idiotic saying, yes, there is one simple guide to most problems: do not harm others. Do not mess with their stuff. Just leave people alone as long as they leave you alone. And if people won’t leave you alone, enlist society to get redress, but do so only after they have harmed you, or made an imminently unavoidable threat.
May I suggest switching to decaf after lunch?
Also … I think you’re misinterpreting the quote. Basically it’s a caution that complex problems often – not always, but often – require complex solutions. Or perhaps most relevantly for this discussion, simple solutions that may be unpaltable.
he should have ended his piece with the following:
(Dropped the Mic)
I think he is really getting down to the root of why the left are for gun control. They don’t believe that anybody can be evil. They always want to put the blame on something rather than the individuals who commit atrocities themselves. It’s always the accessibility to weapons, environment they were raised in, video games, movies, media, etc. when they refuse to say what the real problem is: the person. Extenuating circumstances regardless, people always have a choice, mental issues or not. People are inherently flawed in one way or another and to ignore that people can and will always have the ability to be evil will always put the left in the wrong.
‘They don’t believe that anybody can be evil.’
Except conservatives. Conservatives are evil. Mass murderers? Just misunderstood. Conservatives? Evil.
Liberal thinking: Kill the Conservatives because they are wrong but let the Cop Killer out of prison because he is an unfortunate victim of circumstances.
The end game of every Lib-Prog Utopian dream in history has always been fascism (We have decided what is best for you. If you know what’s good for you then you will NOT argue with us.) and the requirement to kill those who oppose their unworkable society.
Their philosophy is not coherent taken in its entirety. They Beatrice birth that people aren’t evil and that conservatives are. I bet if you pressed a dyed in the wool lefty ideologue they would admit that conservatives aren’t people.
Many in the left believe that “everyone will be good as long as we give them education and opportunity.” The sad fact that men can choose to embrace evil is completely lost to them. The fact that armed individuals without uniforms and badges can stop armed killers? Also lost.
It’s ironic. An armed psycho can cause mass murder, yet in their mindset an armed civilian can’t stop it. We, as “gun nuts,” could “go off the rails” at any time and become the next mass murderer with our evil AR-15’s. Yet if that happens, the only thing that could stop us is not another person with a firearm. It *must* be the almighty power of the state.
“everyone will be good as long as we give them education and opportunity.”
This is the founding principle of communism, fascism and progressivism. Government can make people better people, by force if necessary. The only difference between communism and progressivism is the degree of force their proponents are willing to use.
Spot on.
umm, I don’t see any difference. Progressives fight to be able to murder the unborn and call it a “right” and so have murdered over 50 million babies. That makes Hitler look like a piker and is right up behind Stalin in his mass murder of his Russian “comrades”.
Might be splitting hairs just a bit, but there’s a difference between allowing and condoning civilians killing millions of children and the government being the actual perpetrator of the crimes. The progressives are perfectly happy to stand by and cheer your crimes on, but when it comes to actual government force they take a more stealth approach than Stalin. Stalin had his ‘gulags’, Kim Jong Un has his ‘reeducation camps’, the progressives have ‘college’. Same purpose, different approach.
“This is the founding principle of communism, fascism and progressivism. Government can make people better people, by force if necessary.”
Only one small quibble, Guv – in those political systems they are never interested in making better people, but in making a better society, individuals be damned. They then resort to culling the herd in order to retain only those individuals that are too weak or cowardly to resist their Utopian schemes.
Even if you remove all moral attributes from people and abscribe to the view there is no such thing as free will, our incarceration of criminals should not change. There is nothing morally wrong with a rabid dog, but it must not be allowed to harm the world.
I believe the true root of anti-gun opinions is the independence and self sufficiency attidude linked to guns and their history. Democracy breeds into people a notion of freedom and equality. Equality when taken to its extreme requires everyone to be equally base and dependent apon the state. Any natural difference between men or liberating act or item found among them is an affront to some peoples view of the world.
Agreed. As I heard it once before: “The rancher does not hate the wolf, it is only being a wolf, the only thing it know how to be. He dispatches it nevertheless, to protect his defenseless animals.”
The next paragraph was great:
“When we politicize a tragedy, it is immediately sucked into a broader ideological conflict. Then conservatives (at least when out of power) will see (rightfully, I believe) an intrusive agenda that is a perpetual slippery slope. (Can you blame them when they hear this? “No, we don’t want confiscation, but look at what the Australians did! They confiscated guns. We don’t want confiscation, but isn’t that Second Amendment interpretation so stupid?!”) Trust me, it’s not unreasonable to treat liberal policies as if they have a tendency for mission creep and unwieldy expansion.”
The disarm monkeys on the Left, and their willing sock-puppets in the media, have been crying “WOLF!” about guns since, well, since before most of us were born. What IS surprising, is how long it took for enough Americans to catch-on, and question the fabulist narrative.
Australia, for example, had violence continue to rise after their 1997 ban until 2001 when their gdp had the largest one year gain in history. Economics plays the only substantial role here. Want to stop crime in detroit? Remove the regulations and invite business back. I guarantee as detroits economy gets better so will it’s crime rate.
In contrast, new guns in circulation rise every year in the US while violent crime continues to fall.
But facts be damned because progressives only use emotional arguments and they work on the idiotic masses. Until we learn to use emotion as a weapon, like they have, we will continue to lose this fight.
Economics are a significant factor, but hardly the only one. Violent crime has continued to go down through the Obameconomy.
Not in urban america
In some urban areas violent crime is on it’s way back up in the last couple of years, but compare the numbers to 1993. Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, etc., all lower than 20 years ago.
Slaughterhouse 5 reference? I enjoyed that book.
But about the left and gun control: it’s amazing that you can do no wrong in the left’s eyes unless you support traditional and constitutional values.
Invite business back…why would I fo that? Back to a worn down, crime ridden place? Why would I invest in people who have no education, cannot function in a work environment and rob materials because employees feels that owners owe them?
Democrats are the reason this country is changed and not for the good. Their policies of everyone should have a home, granting loans to renters blew up and gutted every 401k by 35%. They didn’t redistribute wealth, thier policies enabled Wall Street to gut citizens financial future.
Democratically control cites have the highest crime rate. Democratic immigration policies swamp our prisons, our hospitals, and work places with people who cannot read or speak English. The unkept promise to improve people’s lives, undelivered.
Now the Democrates in all their failures want our armaments, specifically so you cannot lawfully defend yourself against criminals they import. Democrates will never stop trying to take the tools used to sustain our natural right of lawful self protection. Please register and vote 2016.
Crazy thought: What if we looked at the causes of the decline in violent crime and worked to encourage those factors? Nah… let’s keep blaming what’s in a shooter’s hand instead of what’s in his heart, head, and background.
It’s funny how the left will recoil at the claim “drug addiction in the US is due to drugs coming from Mexico” but will be the first to claim “gun violence in Chicago is due to guns coming from Indiana”. The level of blindness and ignorance from the left, who will gladly label anyone else close-minded, is amazing.
“gun violence has precipitously declined over the decades without any meaningful federal law being enacted”
And that in spite of the mass importation of violent gangs and criminals, supplying guns to drug cartels, and the falsifying of gun death “statistics”.
The left believes that the number of guns is at fault rather than social ills—because no person can be evil.
No. They believe that we are evil. Not gangbangers, spree killers, insane psychopaths or the anus in the White House — just us. And if we’re white men, we’re triple-evil.
It’s not surprising. The only thing threatening to statists is free people. All those other criminals may attack them physically, but us simply being the free men and women we are, we attack them existentially. They can’t hide from their own weak, pathetic, violent natures so long as we exist.
A quote from the BBC classic series “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” reminds me of Democrats and other progressives:
“… head is so full of wool it is child’s play to pull it over his eyes.”
The Dems and other progtards don’t realize they are being played for fools because they’ve been blinded by ideology.
I thought there were good gun control laws on the books, no criminal can have a gun.No double standards put DC politicians on Obamacare and SS.Thanks for your support and vote.Pass the word. mrpresident2016.com
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